Summary—Chapter 7: Fort Lincoln: An Interview
When your mother and your father are
having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want
them to stop fighting?
(See Important Quotations Explained)
An unnamed interrogator questions Papa at Fort Lincoln,
North Dakota. The interrogator asks if he has had contact with his
uncle, who is a general in Japan, but Papa says he has not. He adds
that he has never returned to Japan because he is a black sheep
in his family. The interrogator asks for the names of Papa’s
ten children, and Papa names all but Jeanne, saying there are too
many to remember. The interrogator accuses him of supplying oil
to a Japanese submarine off the coast of California, but Papa says
only a foolish commander would voyage so far from his fleet. The
interrogator shows him a photograph and asks what was in the two
fifty-gallon drums seen on the deck of the Wakatsuki’s boat. Papa
answers that it was fish guts to attract mackerel into the nets.
The interrogator asks him what he thinks of the attacks on Pearl
Harbor and the American military. Papa replies that he
is sad for both countries but that he is sure the Americans will
win because they are bigger and richer, and Japan’s leaders are
stupid. He says he weeps every night for his country.
The interrogator asks if he still feels loyalty to the Japanese
emperor, but Papa counters by asking the interrogator’s age. Papa
laments that though he has been living in the United States nine
years longer than the twenty-nine-year-old interrogator, he is prevented
from becoming a citizen. The interrogator again asks Papa who he
wants to win the war. Papa responds by asking the interrogator whether,
if his mother and father were fighting, he would want them to kill
each other or to just stop fighting.
Summary—Chapter 8: Inu
Papa moves into the crowded barracks with Mama and Jeanne,
and does not go outside for what seems like months. Mama brings
him meals from the mess halls, and he makes rice wine and brandy
with extra portions of rice and canned fruit. He spends day after
day getting drunk, cursing, and vomiting, and wakes up every morning moaning.
Jeanne believes Papa never goes out because he feels superior to
the others, but in the latrine one day she overhears some Terminal
Island women whispering about Papa and using the word “inu.” Inu literally
means “dog” but can also refer to collaborators and informers. The
women call Papa “inu” because he was released from
Fort Lincoln earlier than the other men and is rumored to have bought
his release by informing on the others.
When Mama reports the incident to Papa, he flies into
a rage, cursing her for disappearing, not bringing him his food
on time, and helping to spread the rumors that keep him inside the
barracks all day. He threatens to kill her. Mama encourages him
to strike, but when Papa raises his cane, Kiyo emerges from the
bed where he has been hiding and punches Papa in the face. Papa
stares at him in rage and admiration, but Kiyo runs out the door.
Jeanne is proud of Kiyo but feels that everything is collapsing
around her. Kiyo hides at an older sister’s room for two weeks before
coming to ask Papa’s forgiveness. Papa accepts his apology, but
Jeanne’s sense of loss grows deeper as Papa continues to get drunk
and abuse Mama.
Analysis—Chapter 7
“Fort Lincoln: An Interview” is the first of three semifictional
chapters that Wakatsuki uses to discuss events in her family members’ lives
that relate directly to the larger themes of her own experience. Farewell
to Manzanar is primarily nonfiction, but it often includes fictional
or altered details to develop its themes. Wakatsuki addresses what
happened to Papa at Fort Lincoln because his struggle with being
both Japanese and American mirrors her own struggle to define herself
after leaving Manzanar. In later chapters, Wakatsuki admits that
her father only ever uttered three or four sentences about Fort
Lincoln, but she does not reveal this detail to us until after we
have read the interview between Papa and the interrogator as true,
word for word. This minor deception, combined with the chapter’s
inclusion of many biographical details found in “Whatever
He Did Had Flourish,” makes us forget that Wakatsuki cannot possibly
be giving a wholly accurate report of her father’s experience. Despite
its fictional nature, “Fort Lincoln: An Interview” underscores the
truths that Wakatsuki exposes throughout the work about ethnic prejudice
and the difficulty of understanding one’s identity.
This fictionalized interview gives us a very real and
immediate sense of Papa’s and the other Issei men’s struggles with
the impossibility of being loyal to two conflicting nations. This
struggle is apparent throughout the interview, as Papa evades the
interrogator’s questions about his family and background. His comment
that “I weep every night for my country” is ambiguous, as it is
not clear whether he is referring to Japan or America. Japan is
his country of birth, but America is his country of choice; in his
responses he cannot commit to one side or the other because his
attachments to the two, though different in nature, are equally
strong. His comparison of the war between Japan and America to a
quarrel between parents reveals how personal the war is to Papa.
Like many Japanese Americans, he is unable to favor one country
over the other, because doing so would mean rejecting either his
heritage or his dream for economic and social success.
Analysis—Chapter 8
“Inu” explores Papa’s metaphor for the war between Japan
and the United States as a fight between parents by looking at a
real domestic dispute between Papa and Mama. Their fight is completely
irrational, as Papa attacks Mama about gossip and rumors for which she
is not responsible. Similarly, the war between Japan and America
is an irrational byproduct of conquests and alliances taking place
thousands of miles away in Europe. The children can only watch in
horror as Mama invites Papa’s violence, and Papa raises his cane
to strike her because he is too proud to back down. Kiyo, representing
the Japanese Americans who watched the war break out between their
mother and father countries, strikes Papa because he “just want[s]
them to stop fighting.” In this way, this fight is different from
the metaphorical fight between parents that Papa describes. Whereas
Kiyo intervenes and cools the conflict between his parents, the
Japanese Americans are unable to take action and must ultimately
watch their parent countries devastate each other.
